Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Whales

I finished Moby-Dick. It only took me a month, which is pretty good. It was helping me keep my mind off of my surgery recovery, so it was certainly a helpful book for me. Was it the Greatest American Novel that it has often been called? While I found parts of it to be a whale of a good time, it was, on the whole, rather taxing. I just completed my reading yesterday, so I've certainly not studied the book or written extensively about it. These are just my initial opinions as a reader.

What works for me in the book? The actual story of the novel is pretty great. It's a fairly simple story, really: Ahab wants to kill the White Whale for revenge. That's about it. What makes it so engaging is Melville's characterization and style. Ahab, Stubb, Queequeg, and Starbuck are all very different and complex characters, and Melville takes his time allowing us to get into their heads (you have time for this sort of thing with such a long novel). For the most part, the characterization is developed through extended scenes of dialogue (except for Queequeg, a savage who doesn't really say much). It's often really more like Shakespearian monologues, where the characters talk to themselves at length, moving along the plot and revealing their inner motivations and thoughts. My favorite example of this is a scene towards the end in which Starbuck, the moral first mate, contemplates killing Ahab to save the crew from the monomaniacal captain's destructive mission. It's as dramatic as Hamlet's great soliloquies. Another favorite speech comes in the beginning of the book, before the Pequod even ships out. A preacher named Father Mapple delivers a sermon tying whaling and seafaring to the Bible in a church where his pulpit is designed to look like the forecastle of a ship. I suppose that this is what I liked best about Moby-Dick; it's really a Shakespearian tragedy. Ahab is clearly the tragic hero, whose hell-bent thirst for revenge brings about his own demise. The story tucked away in Melville's massive text really is a classic tale of obsession and adventure.

What didn't work for me? Well, that story and characterization that was so rich only took up about 40% of the book. The rest was, essentially, factual information about whales and the business of whaling. That's about 350 pages of reference material and Melville's editorializing. At first, it was interesting. I was intrigued by the history of whaling and Melville's musings on why whaling should be considered a noble enterprise. However, after days and days of reading without any mention of Ahab or his crew, I cared less and less about entire chapters about the dimensions of a whale's skeleton. Chapters about how blubber is harvested from whale carcasses. Chapters about the laws governing who legally possesses a whale if one ship kills it and another finds the body. It's seems that Melville did a ton of research to write this book and decided to include EVERYTHING he found. Our narrator "Ishmael" disappears as a character, as the common sailor is replaced by a gifted writer far too obsessed with whales. That's not to say these chapters are all a lost cause. Even when writing about blubber, Melville manages to write symbolically and with poetic insight. Still, he just about killed my longing for the sea.

I can appreciate novels that include information that is not exactly relevant to the plot (these sections are some of my favorite bits in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel, for instance), but this was a bit much for me. There's a classic tale of nautical adventure and Shakespearian tragedy in this 600+ page novel. However, that tale is only about 300 pages long. I know that this is a common criticism of Moby-Dick by people who "don't get it." I don't think I'm missing anything here, I just think that Melville is asking a bit too much of his readers. Reading it became a chore in the middle, and this soiled my focus on and enjoyment of the final riveting chapters. I was on board at the beginning, Melville. You had me in your nets, but you lost me.

Lots of other things have happened this month as well, of course. School is out. I had surgery. The first season of Lost has been devoured. There are tomatoes and zucchini at the market. It's summer.

Still deciding about the next book. Either Dostoevsky or Faulkner, probably.